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The Duke could not understand how the same man who spoke to him was seen to go into the abbey, and he was still wondering when AEgeon asked Antipholus of Ephesus if he was not his son. He replied, "I never saw my father in my life;" but so deceived was AEgeon by his likeness to the brother whom he had brought up, that he said, "Thou art ashamed to acknowledge me in misery."
Aegeon's youngest son, Antipholus of Syracuse, he whom the old man had come to Ephesus to seek, happened to arrive at Ephesus with his slave Dromio that very same day that Aegeon did; and he being also a merchant of Syracuse, he would have been in the same danger that his father was, but by good fortune he met a friend who told him the peril an old merchant of Syracuse was in, and advised him to pass for a merchant of Epidamnum.
But to the utter astonishment of Aegeon, his son denied all knowledge of him, as well he might, for this Antipholus had never seen his father since they were separated in the storm in his infancy; but while the poor old Aegeon was in vain endeavouring to make his son acknowledge him, thinking surely that either his griefs and the anxieties he had suffered had so strangely altered him that his son did not know him, or else that he was ashamed to acknowledge his father in his misery; in the midst of this perplexity, the lady abess and the other Antipholus and Dromio came out and the wondering Adriana saw two husbands and two romios standing before her.
This day of grace did seem no great favour to Aegeon, for not knowing any man in Ephesus, there seemed to him but little chance that any stranger would lend or give him a thousand marks to pay the fine; and helpless and hopeless of any relief, he retired from the presence of the duke in the custody of a jailor.
Antipholus of Syracuse married the fair Luciana, the sister of his brother's wife; and the good old Aegeon, with his wife and sons, lived at Ephesus many years.
At the age of eighteen the son who was with AEgeon grew restless with a desire to find his brother. AEgeon let him depart with his servant, and the young men are henceforth known as Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse. Let alone, AEgeon found his home too dreary to dwell in, and traveled for five years.
Antipholus of Syracuse had not come out of the abbey, before his brother of Ephesus prostrated himself in front of the Duke, exclaiming, "Justice, most gracious Duke, against that woman." He pointed to Adriana. "She has treated another man like her husband in my own house." Even while he was speaking AEgeon said, "Unless I am delirious, I see my son Antipholus."
Aegeon, seeing his son, concluded this was the son who had left him to go in search of his mother and his brother; and he felt secure that his dear son would readily pay the money demanded for his ransom. He therefore spoke to Antipholus in words of fatherly affection, with joyful hope that he should now be released.
Aegeon had no money to pay the fine, and the duke, before he pronounced the sentence of death upon him, desired him to relate the history of his life, and to tell for what cause he had ventured to come to the city of Ephesus, which it was death for any Syracusan merchant to enter.
Joyful congratulations and affectionate greetings between these long-separated parents and their children made them for a while forget that Aegeon was yet under sentence of death. When they were become a little calm, Antipholus of Ephesus offered the duke the ransom money for his father's life; but the duke freely pardoned Aegeon, and would not take the money.
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